U.S. yet to accommodate China's rise

By Philip Stephens

Financial Times

Published: April 2 2005
Go back two
or three years and the issue that most occupied the best foreign
policy brains was how America would (or should) deploy its
unrivalled power in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September
11 2001. More recently, brows have furrowed over the strategic
implications of President George W. Bush's determination to overturn
the authoritarian status quo in the Middle East. Like much else,
though, foreign policy is a slave to fashion. So the issue of the
moment is no longer how the global system adjusts to the American
imperium but rather how the US accommodates the world's rising
powers, above all China.

The prosaic reality is that all three of these things will remake
the geostrategic landscape in the coming decades. The huge
uncertainties inherent in each of them - and in the interactions
between them - do much to explain why that terrain is still wrapped
in a dense fog. Logic says that a world free of cold war nuclear
confrontation should be a safer place. But we have learnt that
dangerous certainties can seem more reassuring than unpredictable
upheavals.

In this context, it is fair to say that the implications of
China's rapid emergence as a global power have been neglected. The
war in Iraq, the hunt for al-Qaeda, the promised US drive to
democratise the Middle East and the splintering of the transatlantic
alliance have all grabbed more headlines. China, and for that matter
India, have been there in the background. But only recently have the
geostrategic implications of China's economic power gained serious
attention beyond the think-tanks.

The transatlantic dispute over whether the European Union should
lift its embargo on arms sales to Beijing illustrates the point. The
ill-considered decision to end the ban did not speak to any serious
judgment about how Europe should build a constructive relationship
with China. Rather, it reflected an instinctive desire to grab a
slice of a lucrative market.

Equally, the Bush administration's angry response to the European
proposal was as much about political reflexes as considered
judgment. The US administration cannot avoid taking positions
towards China, not least because of the security threats posed by
tension in the Taiwan Strait and by North Korea's nuclear programme.
But Washington's present approach - encouraging China's integration
into the global economy while containing its military power and
strengthening America's bilateral alliances - scarcely amounts to a
strategic map.

A shrewd observer of these things told me recently that
historians would look back on November 2004 as the moment when
China's economic power translated into a decisive shift in the
global political balance. That month, Hu Jintao, the Chinese
president, toured Latin America buying up as much iron ore, copper,
tin, bauxite and soyabeans as he could find.

This was more, though, than a shopping trip to sate China's
voracious appetite for raw materials. As Washington's gaze remained
fixed on the Middle East, China was building alliances in America's
backyard and making friends of Mr Bush's enemies. In December, Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela's president and Washington's bÍte noire, visited
Beijing to clinch a long-term oil supply agreement. All this, of
course, followed other, equally unwelcome, Chinese energy deals with
countries such as Sudan and Iran.

I am not sure historians will be as diligent in their research as
my friend suggests. What is true is that Chinese power has become
ever more apparent even as the Bush administration has hesitated
over whether to see it as a strategic partner or rival. During her
recent tour of the region, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state,
contrived to do both. "We want China as a global partner," she said
at one point. Beijing had shown itself an ally in the war on terror
and had a critical role in persuading Pyongyang to end its nuclear
weapons programme. In the next breath, though, she warned that the
European decision (now seemingly suspended) to lift the arms
embargo, would "upset the balance of power in the region". Beijing,
meanwhile, had heightened tensions with Taiwan by passing a new
anti-secession law. US efforts to bolster its relationships with
Japan, South Korea and India, Ms Rice continued, were calculated to
"create an environment in which China will play a positive role".
That sounds an awful lot like a policy of containment.

Some of the apparent contradictions are explicable. In any event,
geopolitics is rarely neat. But the equivocal US stance also
obscures the underlying forces. As a matter of definition, China is
a rival to the US. China's thirst for oil and other natural
resources apart, for the past 60 years the US has been east Asia's
leading power and the sole security guarantor. Beijing's growing
influence, political and military as well as economic, promises to
end that hegemony. Put simply, China's rise will unavoidably be at
the expense of US power. Washington can seek to slow the process
with military embargoes and countervailing alliances but it cannot
stop it.

The question, then, becomes whether the transition is relatively
smooth and co-operative and what, if any, security structure
replaces the present Pax America; or whether menace or
miscalculation draw the US and China into conflict somewhere along
the way.

The dangers are clear enough. The risk of unintended war in
Taiwan or the Korean peninsula aside, east Asia has yet to throw off
history's grudges and territorial disputes. Renascent Japanese and
Chinese nationalism are a reminder of how past rivalries weigh on
the region. Alongside these lies the big "known unknown" as to
whether China's rising economic power will translate into political
change. Will the communist leadership bow to or seek to rein back
pressures for greater pluralism? To what extent will it remain in
charge of events?

So Washington's instinct is to seek to contain China by acting as
the region's balancing force. It may work for a while. The vital
missing ingredient for long-term stability, though, is a
multilateral security framework in which, albeit with US
encouragement, the region's other leading powers can work out their
own accommodations. Europe needed the EU and the Atlantic alliance
in order to exorcise the demons of its history. Both depended on
enlightened self-interest in Washington. But in those days, of
course, multilateralism was understood in the White House as a
source of strength rather than weakness.